A Maryland restaurant remained open to diners for over two hours last Wednesday while a Black woman’s body laid unconscious in its restroom, Fox 5 DC reported.
Craig Winn and his wife, identified as Verna, were wrapping up at Jasper’s Restaurant in Largo when the unthinkable occurred to his “soul mate, my life partner, my best friend, my lover” of 40 years, per the news outlet
.“Once we finished, we all got our check and everyone decided to go to the restroom,” Winn recalled.
However, Verna didn’t return, so he asked her cousin to check in on her. Verna’s cousin discovered her unconscious in the restroom stall, and rushed back to deliver heartbreaking news.
“I just immediately jumped up and ran into the restroom and saw my wife lying on the floor and that was the last image of my wife. Lying on the stall floor in the lady’s restroom,” Winn continued.
According to Winn, his wife received CPR until officers with the Prince George’s County Police Department and EMS arrived. She was pronounced dead from a heart attack. They waited nearly three hours for the coroner’s office to collect the body. Meanwhile, the restaurant continued to seat people.
A curtain barrier blocked the women’s restroom where the family gathered, and the men’s restroom was offered for men and women. The restaurant continued to stay open until midnight, sparking a backlash on a social media
.“Hindsight is 20/20, we didn’t know it was going to take the coroner two hours to collect the body,” one of the owners, Fred Rosenthal, told NBC News. “If we did, we would’ve stopped seating people. We were trying to keep it as respectful as possible and not cause a scene.”
Rosenthal confirmed that the coroner’s office arrived at Jasper’s around 9 p.m. to retrieve the body, more than two hours after police responded to the scene. The body was removed quietly through a side entrance so as not to not disturb customers.
“The only thing that would’ve made me feel better is if somebody, a management person who was working that night, would’ve come over and asked what they could do to make the situation better,” Winn told told Fox 5 DC.